Whatever you want a chicken for, be it for eggs, a pet, or meat, you can find numerous varieties to pick from. Picking a chicken for your backyard flock can appear difficult, with all of the offerings in beautiful exotics, fabulous egg layers, and dispositions that there are.
Top Kinds for Egg Laying
Although all chicken lay eggs, some will lay an egg a day, every day, from the time they are 5 months old to the age of four years while others will not. Some of the best eggs layers do not like to sit, though, so if you want chicks, you have to have a way to incubate the eggs ? either mechanically or with another breed of hens.
See Chicken Coop Designs if you’re thinking of building your own hen house.
The best white egg layers are:
Lakenvelder: Beautiful breed, tense
Leghorn: Loud, tense, timid
Minorca: Moderate disposition, can be amiable but anxious
Redcap: Crazy, poor disposition
Ancona: Anxious, Wild
Andulasian: Flighty, can be stressed
Catalina: shy, tense
Hamburg: Stressed, timid
Holland: Good disposition, Well-behaved
The best brown egg layers are:
Australorp: Good disposition, friendly
Java: Friendly, Exotic
Naked Neck Turkin: Good disposition
Plymouth Rock: Good disposition, friendly, docile
Rhode Island: Aggressive
Delaware: Good disposition
Dominique: Good egg production and personality, will also brood.
Sussex: Good disposition, friendly
Wyandotte: A favorite egg layer because of their friendliness.
Most appropriate Meat Chickens
The main objective with meat production is chickens which put on a good bit of weight in the first 16 weeks of life. For most, because they are not predicted to be long-lived, the breed’s personality is not as imperative as with egg layers that you deal with on a daily basis for years. A few of the excellent meat producing breeds are:
Cornish: Thin feathered, will need to be protected from cold; poor egg layers
Cornish Cross: hybrid with fast growth, but susceptible to heart attacks and broken legs
Some varieties are regarded as really good dual-purpose birds with a balance of egg laying and growth. These breeds will regularly lay four to 5 eggs per week.